The question now arises: are there in the economic conditions of the Russian agrarian bourgeois-democratic upheaval material foundations that compel petty proprietors to demand the nationalization of land, or is this demand too merely a phrase, merely an innocent wish of the grey muzhik, an empty dream of a patriarchal tiller of the soil?

To answer this question, we must first represent to ourselves more concretely the conditions of any bourgeois-democratic upheaval in agriculture, and then compare with these conditions those two paths of capitalist agrarian evolution which are possible for Russia, as we have indicated above.

On the conditions of the bourgeois upheaval in agriculture, from the standpoint of landownership relations, Marx speaks very forcefully in the final volume of the *Theories of Surplus Value* (*Theorien über den Mehrwert*, II. Band, 2. Teil, Stuttgart, 1905).

Having analyzed the views of Rodbertus, having demonstrated all the limitations of the theory of this Pomeranian landowner, having enumerated in detail each individual manifestation of his stupidity (II, 1. Teil, S. 256–258, erster Blödsinn – sechster Blödsinn des Herrn Rodbertus{64}), Marx turns to Ricardo's theory of rent (II, 2. Teil, § 3 b) "The Historical Conditions of Ricardo's Theory"){92}.

"Both," says Marx of Ricardo and Anderson, "both proceed from a conception that seems very strange on the continent, namely, that 1) there does not exist at all landownership as an obstacle to any application of capital to land; 2) that agriculturists proceed from better lands to worse lands. In Ricardo this presupposition has absolute significance, if we disregard interruptions in development arising from the intervention of science and industry; in Anderson this presupposition is relative, because worse soil is again transformed into better soil; 3) that there is always available capital, a sufficient mass of capital to be applied to agriculture.

As regards points 1 and 2, it must necessarily seem extremely strange to the inhabitants of the continent that in such a country in which, according to their conception, feudal landownership has been most strongly preserved, economists—both Ricardo and Anderson—proceed from the assumption of the non-existence of landownership. This circumstance is explained:

firstly, by the peculiarity of the English "law of enclosures" (the law concerning the enclosure of communal land), which has absolutely nothing in common with the continental partition of common lands;

secondly, nowhere in the world has capitalist production, since the epoch of Henry VII, dealt so ruthlessly with traditional agricultural arrangements, nowhere has it created for itself such perfect (adequate = ideally corresponding) conditions, nowhere has it subordinated these conditions to itself to such a degree. England in this respect is the most revolutionary country in the world. All historically inherited arrangements, insofar as they contradicted the conditions of capitalist production in agriculture or did not conform to these conditions, were ruthlessly swept away: not only was the arrangement of rural settlements altered, but the settlements themselves were swept away; not only were the dwellings and places of settlement of the agricultural population swept away, but the population itself; not only were the ancient centers of economy swept away, but the economy itself. Among the Germans, for example, economic arrangements turned out to be determined by traditional relations of communal lands (Feldmarken), by the arrangement of economic centers, by certain places of population concentration. Among the English, the historical arrangements of agriculture turned out to be gradually created by capital, beginning from the fifteenth century. The technical expression common in the United Kingdom, "clearing of estates" (literally = clearing of estates or clearing of lands) is not encountered in a single continental country. And what does this "clearing of estates" mean? It means that there was absolutely no regard for the settled population—they were driven out—nor for existing villages—they were razed to the ground—nor for economic buildings—they were demolished—nor for given types of agriculture—they were changed at a single stroke, transforming, for example, arable fields into pasture for cattle—in a word, they did not accept all the conditions of production in the form in which they existed by tradition, but historically created these conditions in such a form that they corresponded in each given case to the requirements of the most profitable application of capital. To that extent, therefore, landownership truly does not exist, because this ownership provides capital—the farmer—with the freedom to manage, concerned exclusively with obtaining monetary income. Some Pomeranian landowner, whose head contains nothing but ancestral (angestammten) communal lands, economic centers, agricultural collegium, etc., may therefore throw up his hands in horror at Ricardo's "unhistorical" conception of the development of agricultural arrangements. But in doing so he only shows that he naively confuses Pomeranian and English conditions. On the other hand, it cannot at all be said that Ricardo, proceeding in this case from English conditions, is as limited as the Pomeranian landowner who thinks within the bounds of Pomeranian relations. For English conditions are the only conditions in which modern landownership has developed adequately (with ideal perfection), that is, landownership as modified by capitalist production. English theory is in this respect classical for the modern, that is, the capitalist mode of production. Pomeranian theory, on the contrary, discusses developed conditions from the standpoint of a historically lower, not yet fully formed (not adequate) form of relations" (Seiten 5–7){93}.

This is a remarkably profound argument from Marx. Have our "municipalists" ever reflected upon it?

Marx already in Volume III of *Capital* (2. Teil, S. 156) indicated that the form of landownership which the developing capitalist mode of production encounters in history does not correspond to capitalism. Capitalism itself creates the forms of land relations corresponding to it out of old forms—out of feudal landowner, out of peasant-communal, out of clan landownership, etc.{94}. In the passage cited, Marx compares different ways in which capitalism creates forms of landownership corresponding to itself. In Germany the recreation of medieval forms of landownership proceeded, so to speak, reformistically, adapting itself to routine, to tradition, to serf estates slowly transformed into Junker estates, to routine plots of indolent peasants{65} experiencing a difficult transition from corvée to hired labor and to the großbauer. In England this recreation proceeded revolutionarily, violently, but the violence was perpetrated in the interests of landowners, violence was perpetrated against the peasant masses, who were exhausted by exactions, driven from villages, displaced, dying out and emigrating. In America this recreation proceeded violently in relation to the slaveholding economies of the Southern States. Here violence was applied against serf-owning landowners. Their lands were broken up, landownership from large feudal began to transform itself into small bourgeois{66}. And in relation to the mass of "free" American lands, this role of creating new land arrangements for a new mode of production (that is, for capitalism) was played by the "American black repartition," the movement of the 40s against rent (Anti-Rent-Bewegung), legislation concerning homesteads{95}, etc. When the German communist Hermann Kriege in 1846 preached an equalizing land repartition in America, Marx ridiculed the populist prejudices and petty-bourgeois theory of this quasi-socialism, but appreciated the historical significance of the American movement against landownership{67} as a movement progressively expressing the interests of the development of productive forces, the interests of capitalism in America.